X-Message-Number: 20141 From: "mike99" <> Subject: God talk...again (was Re: CryoNet #20116 - #20124) Date: Sun, 22 Sep 2002 19:22:29 -0600 (d) wrote: << >LaTorra<<What this all comes down to, in my opinion, is that mystical experiences can be induced technologically. While this does not disprove the independent existence of a deity (that's a different philosophical problem), it brings into question millennia of reports from "god-experiencers" about what they were "told" to reveal to the rest of us.>> >d: do synthetic rubies bring into question the existence of "natural" >rubies? Mark Plus: Bad analogy. No one disputes the existence of rubies. d: the number of disputants on either side of an argument is irrelevant to the validity of either side of the argument. you misunderstand the nature of analogy. LATORRA: On the contrary, Mark is correct. I was prepared to make the very same point in response to your analogy until I saw that Mark beat me to it. He was **not** implying that this is a vote in which the majority rules. Rather, the claim is, in your analogy, that we can easily produce physical evidence of both natural and synthetic rubies. Can you produce incontrovertible evidence of the existence of God? Many people dispute the claim that God exists, because there is neither tangible (empirical) evidence nor logical (analytical) proofs that have persuaded anyone who did not already want to believe. ...... Mark Plus: I happen to find all this talk of "mystical" & "spiritual" experiences baffling. I have no clue what such people are mouthing off about. d: find out. ............ LATORRA: What do you mean by "find out"? Meditate? Pray? Take psychedelics? Use a "brain machine" to induce mystical experiences? One could do some or all of that. I certainly have. But these experiences prove nothing...except that homo sapiens are capable of having such experiences. The experiences certainly don't prove the existence of God, an afterlife, or anything else that some people interpret them to mean. In other words, the meaning is added to the experience by the experiencer. The experiences themselves are just whatever they are: bliss, love, union with something greater, etc. Heck, even many so-called spiritual masters (e.g., Adi Da) warn their followers not to get attached to these experiences. If they don't idolize these subjective states, then why should we? Michael LaTorra Member: Extropy Institute: www.extropy.org World Transhumanist Association: www.transhumanism.org Alcor Life Extension Foundation: www.alcor.org Society for Technical Communication: www.stc.org Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=20141